HP-Microsoft alliance lets CIOs use a hybrid approach, including private cloud with security and service levels strong enough for highly-regulated industries. Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync services are part of the offering.

They need software that lets them rewrite business rules often to react to changing conditions. An independent that competes against IBM and Oracle is racking up some notable customer wins in this tech niche.

Flash, AIR, Reader, and other Adobe technologies can be managed via the Digital Enterprise Platform for Customer Experience Management, designed to help businesses create, manage, and monitor digital content for multiple delivery channels.

The software upgrade addresses data volume, velocity, and variety, and also adds connectivity to social network feeds from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and read-write access to the Hadoop Distributed File System.

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy firming up their fiscal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.